


On the end of days

by SkyEventide



Series: In memory of a Jewelwright [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 13:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2349341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyEventide/pseuds/SkyEventide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two short drabbles on the same theme, the Dagor Dagorath, both touching the theme of the surrender of the Silmarils and one concentrating a bit more on Morgoth's death.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	On the end of days

**Author's Note:**

> The two stories have been written in two different period of times, and some of their sentences look alike for that reason. They are both studies on the same topic, I felt like they would look better together rather than as two separate works.
> 
> One of the most difficult topics when I write Fëanor’s point of view is trying to understand why he eventually gives up the Silmarilli.
> 
> Fëanor will not leave the Halls until the end of time because he is not healed yet. Fëanor enters Mandos being mentally and spiritually destroyed. He has to recover from everything that has happened (caused or suffered) and to deal with his actions, the causes and the consequences, and such a process can’t possibly take less time than Ages. I don’t believe that hanging out in Mandos is the the cause of the recovering from such wounds: it is the consequence. Fëanor is healing, therefore he remains in Mandos, not the contrary. What could he possibly gain from leaving the Halls? He would find himself in Valinor, a place he struggled to leave (exiled or not), where he will hardly find any peace, where Finarfin is High King… while he has still all of his anger, hatred and pain. He doesn’t leave the Halls because he is not ready for it. 
> 
> (Continues at the end.)

\- I -

His father and he are in the same room; it has been innumerable years, countless eras since he could say he  _was_ in a proper  _room_. They sit side by side and breathe slowly, their legs still struggle when they try to walk, and the light, a bright, clear light gleaming through the window, hits their eyes with violence. Finwë’s hand is lightly placed on his own.    
     Fëanáro’s body is new, shaped to match a spirit that grew older in death, dwelling in Mandos as he watched others arrive and depart and learned the story of the world through tapestries. Yet, the air he is breathing is ancient. It carries the dust of ages past and a heavy feeling that reminds him of ashes in his lungs.  
     « Eventually » he says. It is curious how rough his voice sounds. « The end of days comes. » His father tightens his grip on his hand, as he adds: « I will fight in the battle. Apart from meeting again those who are willing, there is nothing else I have to do before the very end. »   
     Finwë does not answer immediately. They have been sharing the solitude of death for so long that some things go unspoken. The hint of a smile trembles in his voice: « I have not heard a word of regret from your lips – only for some happenings, not for others. I have not heard from you any intention to ask the Valar for forgiveness. Not that I was expecting it. But now, my child, when the time comes… »  
His father falls silent but Fëanáro does not hesitate; he does not rush either. « When the time comes and Arda is in darkness, yet its Enemy is defeated, when they will finally return to my hands, than I shall break my heart and shatter my spirit in pieces. »  
     He can see his father slightly turning his head, in the corner of his sight. Finwë’s voice is a whisper. « You will do it » he states, not quite astonished, but a deep quiver betrays how much means that realization.  
     Fëanáro slowly turns his hand palm up and holds his father’s. « I will » he murmurs. « As I had to be the one to seek freedom, to lead rebellion, to carry both glory and infamy in my name, then I will complete what I started. If this world will have a new dawn, if it has to happen through my spirit and the work of my hands, then it will not be as the world I knew. » He gazes upon the stone wall of the antechamber of the Halls and then at the lowering sunlight.   
     He would choose the shape. He would choose happiness for those of his family who had never had it. It would be a world where perfection was not something irremediably lost and marred, but something to strive for – and yet never reach. Someone would have come to best what seemed already perfect, absolute and unchangeable.   
     « It will be my victory. »  
     Finwë, instead of speaking, touches his jaw and makes Fëanáro turn to face him. In his father’s eyes there is a light of faith and on his smile there is a shade of sorrow. Finwë kisses his forehead and, for a while, they rest before the night falls.

 

\- II -

 

          It came the day a new body was offered to him. It came late, after many ages of Arda were passed, it came when the very dust in the air was old and the soil trodden by unnumbered feet. The first breath scorched his lungs and that new light, white light of the Sun, hurt his eyes, but he acquainted himself with both the remade flesh and the changes of the world. The Halls had grown empty, until only two souls were left in them — his father’s and his own.

          Fëanáro came back when the world was about to be unmade, and he rejoiced. The history of ancient Arda was one that he also had shaped, yet part of it had been inevitable, and beyond his control; many things he had wished to seize eluded his grasp, like smoke eluding a fist. Many things he had  _understood_ , many he had accepted, but some he had never forgiven. That history and fate should have been such to make him who he had become, that he had not forgiven. That in his fiercest attempts to defy what fate put in front of him he had made himself who he was, that he had accepted.

          When the Sun was swallowed and the sound of a last battle arose in the air, like a murmur expanding upon all earth, Fëanáro balanced a sword on his hand — he came back to life as he had died, holding steel and chasing the end with words of hope still on his lips. There were the Quendi, from the oldest that had awoken by the waters of Cuiviénen, to the youngest, born when the age of the Eldar had already passed; there was his near kin, faces he stared at as if they were still on bright tapestries and who would stare at him as if he were the piece of some distant dreams; a wife he had loved, lost and absolved and to whom he asked naught, not a word; three sons who kissed his hands, two who hugged him, one who closed his own eyes and a grandson who stared right into his; one son long lost, who appeared with a gaze as old as grief.

          When even the Moon fell, he witnessed what his spirit had longed for so long a time. The Ainur in their primogenial forms, slice the soil open, cutting the heavens themselves, and he asked himself whether that apocalypse was what he had always desired, to tear apart continents and see lands turned into dust, all for the wrong they had wrought and that he had wrought himself; the cracks of his spirit could not be wholly healed unless he witnessed such a sight —the final consequence.

          He saw a Man with a black sword, and he saw the Foe of the World, black and gold, might arising and bringer of shadows. He saw his bright eyes, and his claws holding the Hammer of the Underworld, the thorns on his body, the razor teeth in his mouth. —Some things were not forgiven. The burst of flame that flared inside him told him so, a remnant of who he had once been, and yet that final strike was not meant to fall by his hand. But when it fell, Fëanáro realised that he did not care. When the dark blade fell upon Moringotho, he fell too, on his knees, and gasped for air. For so long a time vengeance had been a part of him that now that it was done, now that Arda itself was shaking, he found himself hollowed out. Darkness poured from the void itself and Fëanáro dropped his sword and his breath.

          But history now would come undone and there was something that had yet to be done – he would break his heart, and his broken heart would bathe in the light of another Arda. It would be as he desired it.

**Author's Note:**

> Another consideration about what “healing” could mean: I believe that healing is possible without repentance (also towards whom said repentance should be addressed and what kind of repentance is.)  
> Does “healing” equal “forgiving”? I don’t think so in the least. Let’s take any other character in the story, maybe a victim of one of the Kinslayings. I doubt this victim needs to forgive everything to their killers in order to come back to life. That is why my assumption is that everyone has a different way to deal with their life and their death – by consequence, that is why I assume that Fëanor doesn’t need at all to “forgive” the Valar recognizing that they are right in any way or to beg for their piety. 
> 
> But. Even before considering such forgiveness, what he needs to heal is to understand his own life. And I think that what he understands is that everything was necessary. Somehow unavoidable, and I support this theory with the fact that the destiny of the Elves, differently from the Men’s, is sung in the First Music. I am not, in any way, using this sort of determinism to excuse him, because absence of free will doesn’t mean absence of moral responsibility.
> 
> Here we are now to the part in which I try to explain why he understands it was necessary. What he had to do, in order to avoid some happenings, actions and reactions, it is being another person. Another person would have acted differently, another person maybe wouldn’t have lost their mother, wouldn’t have had such will and strength and ability. Another person wouldn’t have crafted the Silmarilli. 
> 
> Would a world with a different Fëanor (or no Fëanor at all) have been a world with no Kinslayings, no rebellions, no exiles? Well, no. Maybe some things wouldn’t have happened, but that doesn’t mean “a world without evil”. Because the latest news actually say that the “Evil” is not Fëanor, but Morgoth. And Morgoth exists independently from anyone else. Fëanor or not, Morgoth is there, therefore a world with a different Fëanor, incapable to craft the Silmarilli and with a lesser strength or will, or no Fëanor at all, means a world where nothing, at the end of the world, can remake Arda. The obvious conclusion is that Morgoth shouldn’t exist. But a world where Morgoth is not “Morgoth”, not the Black Foe, but merely Melkor, or a world where Melkor doesn’t exist at all, is not Arda. It is Arda Unmarred. The Silmarillion, however, is set in Arda Marred, Morgoth exists and by logical consequence, the Silmarilli are necessary. Fëanor is necessary.
> 
> We are at the end of time, the Dagor Dagorath. Fëanor has understood that all was utterly necessary and that doesn’t heal the sorrow by itself, doesn’t soothe the pain, doesn’t amend the wrongs only with the acknowledgement. But I think it is far more in character than believing he changes his mind concerning the Valar or other things. Can he realize he could have acted differently, in hindsight? Yes, maybe he can. But, being the person he is (and was), there was no way to break the chain of causes and consequences. He takes the full comprehension of what has happened, but now, after the Dagor Dagorath, now he can give up the Silmarilli.
> 
> Not only because his awareness, but also because now he can obtain what he craved for. The breaking of the Silmarilli to remake the world is the final catharsis and the ultimate step of his life, and he doesn’t give them up because the Valar ask so or because after all is the end and there is nothing left to do. He does it because that way he can obtain Arda Unmarred, where his family (and anyone else, too) will not suffer as it suffered before, where his father will live, where probably also his mother will live, (where bigamy is not really a problem and fuck LaCE and fuck the Statute?), where his sons will live and his wife will not leave him. His deep fear of loss will have no reason to exist, for he will not lose anything else, never. That way he is both avenged and healed, that is the victory.


End file.
